Francis Wevers: Time to stand up to anti-GM thugs

COMMENT

Call me naive if you like, but I'm really at a loss to work out why Greenpeace has decided to focus its New Zealand anti-GM campaign on genetically modified soybean meal fed to chickens.

The Rainbow Warrior sailed into Auckland recently, bedecked in banners proclaiming the guilt of Inghams, the chicken producer that has sourced a shipment of non-GM soy but can't make promises about the future.

Also caught in the Northern Hemisphere green raider's sights was burger chain McDonald's.

So why does Greenpeace take on the one crop in the world where the transgene has been so successful in raising yields that within the next 18 months to two years it will be all but impossible to find secure supplies of non-GM varieties? It's inexplicable.

Soybeans and soymeal are grown mainly in the United States, Argentina, Brazil and parts of Asia. They have wide use in the food chain and are used in large quantities as a high-protein feed for animals, as well as in processed foods for humans.

They come very close to being the ubiquitous food crop, ranking alongside wheat and corn.

Soybeans were an obvious candidate for genetic modification, to make them easier to grow and to increase yields.

Being a low-growing plant with abundant green leaves, the soy crop was often overburdened with weeds. Getting rid of weeds either before or after harvest was a time-consuming and, therefore, costly process.

When scientists isolated a gene that could be used to make host plants tolerate the herbicide glyphosate, soybean growers eagerly picked up the altered plant.

Glyphosate, or the more commonly known Roundup, is the wonder broad-spectrum herbicide that neutralises on contact with the soil. It was, and still is, hailed as the first environmentally friendly broad-spectrum herbicide because of its effectiveness while leaving negligible harmful residues. This is the sort of herbicide Rachel Carson dreamed of when she wrote Silent Spring.

Using glyphosate to manage weed growth in herbicide-tolerant soy fields allows growers to achieve several desirable objectives.

First, they can reduce their cultivation costs. For most soy growers, weed control previously required up to 14 mechanical cultivation passes over the crop between seeding and harvesting. The cost in labour, machinery and fuel was considerable.

Secondly, with glyphosate-tolerant plants farmers could introduce a no-till or low-till cultivation regime, which means less soil disturbance and, therefore increased nitrogen fixation.

There's clear evidence that no-till and low-till agriculture are hugely beneficial to soil health - something that environmentalists must be in favour of, surely.

Thirdly, farmers get an increased yield because of the reduction in competition between crop and weeds.

So the result is a win for the farmer and a win for the environment.

When the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) scare hit Europe a few years ago and scientists laid the blame on the meatmeal fed to cattle, there was a rapid search for alternative high-protein feed sources. Soymeal fits the bill. As a result, European farmers have been buying it in large quantities. For a few years, those who cared were able to obtain non-GM soy from Brazil. But, as southern Brazil farmers watched Argentine neighbours grow the glyphosate-tolerant varieties and increase their yields, they started to smuggle GM varieties in and grow them, despite the Brazilian Government's ban on GM crops.

Last year, the Brazilian authorities were forced to acknowledge that most of their southern soy crop was glyphosate-tolerant, and lifted the ban in southern states. Now the northern soy farmers are looking south.

Predictions are that within the next 18 to 24 months it will be impossible to buy soymeal on the global market that doesn't include at least some glyphosate-tolerant varieties.

Greenpeace tried to counter the inevitability of this development by publishing a report that claimed it was possible to obtain non-GM soy supplies as a feed supplement for dairy cows at an additional cost of only 1p (3c) a litre of milk.

It quoted a British dairy farmer who said, "if there was more demand, GM-free feed would become more mainstream".

And there's the crux of the issue.

Greenpeace appears to have determined that it is able to change a global commodity market - not through normal participation in the market but by the sorts of pressure and commercial coercion that, if companies indulged in it, would result in the full force of legal sanctions.

The campaign involves explicit bullying of fast-food chains, chicken producers, customers, scientists, growers, shippers - anyone who continues to trade in or use soymeal derived from transgenic plants.

And let's also remember there are no published papers from reputable scientists anywhere in the world that support any of the environmental, animal or human health safety issues Greenpeace raises so relentlessly and vocally.

How can it get away with a global campaign based on misinformation and the explicit desire to sabotage an entire commodity market, with no one standing up to hold it to account?

I suppose you could say it is not getting away with it. King Canute had to confront the ghastly truth that the inevitability of moons and tides are not subject to the paltry power of individual men.

And so it will be for Greenpeace. The market for non-GM soy will not develop to a dominant position despite everything that Greenpeace throws at it - history and economics teach us there is only a small niche for old technologies.

But in the meantime the northern green raiders will continue to cost the users of a new technology major damage to their brand values, to business and to profits, and no one will take them to task for it.

Maybe it's time someone did.

* Francis Wevers was the executive director of the Bioscience Policy Institute and Life Sciences Network.